Monday, March 29, 2010

On this edition of "A Musician's Life" Tracey Tanenbaum speaks with bassist Mike Gordon. When his longtime iconic band Phish broke-up in 2004, Gordon felt lost. But eventually despair was replaced by excitement. Gordon began to make his own music and hand-pick a new band. As any Phish fan can tell you, Phish re-formed in 2008. Now Mike Gordon is trying to balance his involvement in Phish with his solo career. Mike Gordon's' latest release is called "The Green Sparrow."

On Thursday, May 13th, Phish will be the musical guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as part of the show’s Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” week (each night of the week a different band will cover a song from the classic Stones album). This will be the band’s first televised late-night appearance since 2004.

It has not been announced which song Phish will perform from Exile. Though "Loving Cup" may seem the obvious choice because of the band's history with the song, following the recent Halloween treatment of the entire album, anything is fair game.

Though an exact list of participants has yet to be announced, according to Billboard, Phish is confirmed to one of them. On May 13th, the band will give its first television performance since reforming in 2009. No word on which song Trey and co. will be covering, though they do have experience with the album; last October, they covered in its entirety at Phish Festival 8. Maybe you’ll want to check out that upcoming 3D film for an early preview?

Then, maybe, but not now. After three decades of near obscurity, Jones is in demand; she and Brooklyn soul curators the Dap-Kings will release their fourth album, I Learned the Hard Way, on April 6. In recent years, she’s sung with Lou Reed in the stage version of Berlin and with Phish for their re-creation of Exile on Main St.; she duetted with Michael Bublé on Saturday Night Live and sings a funkified version of “This Land Is Your Land” in the opening credits of Up in the Air. “I feel like I asked God, and it took me a while,” says Jones. “So instead of ‘Why?’ I say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

One of the myths about Phish involves the Limestone concerts. Phish drew 75,000 people to the middle of nowhere to see them play. That always seemed kind of magical and everyone talks about how that happened, but there’s one factor that I’ve never seen mentioned before. The reason why Limestone always drew so well is because every time Phish played there, they starved their northeastern core fan base all summer.